The Coroner: "So is the evidence of Dr. Pye, as Mr. Reginald Boyd remarked." The Juror: "So is Mr. Reginald Boyd's evidence." The Coroner: "Exactly." (To Mrs. Death.) "I have no further questions to ask you." CHAPTER XLVIII. THE CORONER'S SUMMING-UP. "We have now," said the Coroner, addressing the jury, "arrived at the end of the inquiry, so far as the examination of witnesses is concerned, and the duty devolves upon you of carefully considering the evidence, and of giving your verdict. At the opening of this inquiry I made a strong appeal to you to keep an open mind, and not to be influenced by the rumours and theories which have been freely broached by press and public. It is in this way that the interests of justice will be best served. The case is one of the gravest import, and your task one of unusual difficulty. For this reason I feel it my duty to address you at greater length than is usual in inquiries of this nature. "There are leading points in the case which we may take as established beyond dispute. One is that a murder has been committed, a murder of extreme brutality, and distinguished by features of extreme cunning. Another, that the man murdered is Mr. Samuel Boyd. Another, that the murder was committed on the night of the 1st or the 2nd of March. "That the crime should have remained undiscovered so long is due to the peculiar domestic habits of the deceased, and to the facts that he kept no servants in his house, that he lived quite alone, and that on the evening of the 1st of March he dismissed the only person whom he kept regularly employed. Had this dismissal not been given, and had Mr. Abel Death, his clerk, gone to his work as usual on the following morning, the discovery of the murder would have been made within a few hours of its perpetration, and the task before you would have been rendered far less difficult. I would not have you attach too much importance to the apparent connection between the perpetration of the murder and the disappearance of Mr. Abel Death. Coincidences as strange are not uncommon in matters less serious, and it is not because this matter is serious that the coincidence should be construed to the disadvantage of a man who is absent. Up to Friday, the 1st of March, his relations with his employer were as fairly satisfactory as could have been expected from the miserable stipend he received and from the character of the murdered man, and, unpleasant as those relations became on that last day, there was nothing in them, so far as we are aware, to supply a reason for the committal of a deliberate and dastardly murder, all the details of which must have been carefully planned. If Mr. Abel Death had been a party to this plan he would hardly have asked his employer for a loan of ten pounds, a small sum for a rich man to grant to his confidential clerk.